The author seems to have forgotten about YouTube Messages: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/12446824/heads-up-...
FTA:
“plus innumerable chat features built into other Google products we won’t mention here”
Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
141–150 of 186 posts
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has the same problems Microsoft has always had. They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company, and everything else is peripheral (a first world problem of course). Arguably MS now has more than one, but they've existed twice as long as Google and it's taken many decades to get to that point. It never really mattered if PlayForSure, Zune, Bing, Windows Phone etc were big successes or not, the compan…
> They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company Office, windows, Azure/development, Xbox/gaming are all integrated and cash cows.
I addressed XBox specifically. They wrote off $1.5Bn over the XBox 360 red rings of death issue. It's possible they might have recouped that since, with inflation and interest adjustment, but doubtful.
Windows and Azure are the tent poles I was thinking of when I said they had more than one now.
I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, in the same way that I think it's unreasonable to consider Apple's applications business separately from MacOS. Split Office from Windows and I think it would struggle, certainly it wouldn't have got to where it is now. It's an add-on to the Windows business. On it's own it wouldn't be industry dominating the way Windows, AWS, Google Search, etc are. It's a good business but not industry shaping, not anymore anyway.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile you can move to Matrix; it breaks into quite some walled gardens: https://matrix.org/bridges/
Interesting, but it seems that in order to make it work, I have to know about various different types of "bridges", "plumbing", and whatnot. So, really, quite different from the simplicity of calling someone on a different phone network. Or at least the descriptions on the website make it seem that way. As someone rather busy that cannot spend a few hours configuring I'm not even going to download it...
It depends on the bridge. Some bridges you might use without being aware. E.g. a public open source room/channel that is bridged between matrix and libera.chat. You just use either IRC or Matrix and interact with other users without caring what protocol they use to access the room.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#144I tried so hard to integrate into the Google ecosystem. I had a Gmail account and Google Talk to start. Eventually an Android phone, on Project Fi, with Hangouts and SMS (so I could send SMS over the internet). I upgraded from Gmail to Inbox. Then when they ditched that for Allo and Duo I tried to switch to those. Then I lost SMS on my computer because it got removed from Hangouts. Then I tried to switch to Google vo…
Early adopter curse. I remember buying the first DVD Recorder on the market and being pissed later on that I couldn't burn the (much better) DVD+R type discs in my drive. I never switched from my carrier to Project Fi. Never switched to Hangouts. Never switched to Inbox. Never switched to Allo and Duo. So as far as I'm concerned... Gmail and Google Voice have pretty much always been working as intended for me. It's k…
Google's beta in production strategy worked great when they were turning whole categories on their heads. I'm not sure it still works for them given the reputational damage. They're creating an in for more focused upstarts to swoop in and disrupt them piece by piece.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company Office, windows, Azure/development, Xbox/gaming are all integrated and cash cows.
Surface, Dynamics/PowerBI, Research, NeXT (Hololens)
All utterly peripheral, they could wither and die and have no noticeable impact on the bottom line, which is exactly the point I'm making.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#146I tried so hard to integrate into the Google ecosystem. I had a Gmail account and Google Talk to start. Eventually an Android phone, on Project Fi, with Hangouts and SMS (so I could send SMS over the internet). I upgraded from Gmail to Inbox. Then when they ditched that for Allo and Duo I tried to switch to those. Then I lost SMS on my computer because it got removed from Hangouts. Then I tried to switch to Google vo…
Which service do you use for CalDAV / CardDAV? I've been trying to migrate from a gmail account to my own personal domain, but my current provider doesn't support those so I want to move on to someone else. The thing that annoys me most is that (as far as I can tell) only the big name providers have integrated mail/caldav/carddav, if you use a bring-your-own-domain solution they need to be added as 3 separate account…
Another +1 for Fastmail and a referral link for 10% off your first year (or up to 12 months) if you decide to try it: https://ref.fm/u25202288
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used Google Voice when they first acquired it - it was years early and really ahead of things back then. Texting from the web, voice transcription for messages, could ring multiple numbers. Then they did nothing with it for maybe seven years? MMS would silently fail so people inviting you to events via group chat or sending you a photo would just think you were ignoring them. Hangouts came and the mess with that an…
Google has the same problems Microsoft has always had. They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company, and everything else is peripheral (a first world problem of course). Arguably MS now has more than one, but they've existed twice as long as Google and it's taken many decades to get to that point. It never really mattered if PlayForSure, Zune, Bing, Windows Phone etc were big successes or not, the compan…
One contrast between Microsoft and Google is that Microsoft doesn’t repeatedly break working products and confuse everyone with changing names around yearly.
Microsoft has a long history of failures from Bob to the Zune, but their core stuff, including Windows, Office, Visual Studio, is solid. Bob didn’t destroy Windows. Occasionally the products go off course, like Windows ME, but they seem to correct fairly quickly.
It certainly has been disappointing watching rock solid software from Google just disintegrate over the past decade. If it wasn’t for the iOS Mail app, I suspect gmail would be completely botched by now.
Another consideration to the Verge article, how much money has Google spent doing all of this wild stuff just to their messaging products? I would guess well over $10b. Organizationally Google’s management layers should be gutted. From the CEO to middle management, the company is run by people who couldn’t operate an average company lacking a high margin cashflow cow.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used Google Voice when they first acquired it - it was years early and really ahead of things back then. Texting from the web, voice transcription for messages, could ring multiple numbers. Then they did nothing with it for maybe seven years? MMS would silently fail so people inviting you to events via group chat or sending you a photo would just think you were ignoring them. Hangouts came and the mess with that an…
The difference is, when Apple's software and services are disjointed and user hostile, it's because they think it serves their business interests, and they may be right. I'm proof of it. I buy all their hardware in spite of not being able to use FaceTime or iMessage (beyond than SMS functionality) or any of their iCloud and services sharing because my wife and friends are all on Android/Linux/Windows. It's not a big…
Compare the CEOs of Google and Apple. The contrast explains everything.
Every year I keep thinking Sundar Puchai’s ouster is imminent but it has yet to happen. Which perhaps explains Google’s disfunctionality even more.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has the same problems Microsoft has always had. They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company, and everything else is peripheral (a first world problem of course). Arguably MS now has more than one, but they've existed twice as long as Google and it's taken many decades to get to that point. It never really mattered if PlayForSure, Zune, Bing, Windows Phone etc were big successes or not, the compan…
They're not quite at the same scale as amazon, but many of the Korean/Japanese behemoth companies have enormously succesful businesses in multiple areas. Samsung, Sony, Yamaha for example.
The Zaibatsu/Keiretsu took many generations to get where they are now, and relied on heavy political patronage and financial muscle to grow over protracted periods of time. None of their founders built multiple global businesses from scratch in a single lifetime, let alone simultaneously.
They're also very much artificial constructs, in the sense at this point they are as much political as economic artefacts. The Chaebol are more recent in their modern form but followed the same model.
Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
#150I think it's a fair assessment to say that Google does not have a strategy. They're at their best when they were making something that hadn't been made before. Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Docs were/are in a league of their own in terms of offering, especially when they initially released, but now that Google is effectively trying to play catch-up and won't commit to anything that doesn't catch lightning in a bottle, I feel like confidence is remarkably low.
It's not so bad trying something new every once in a while, but a strategy of assuming everyone will immediately jump ship from an old product that worked just fine to a new product that does less and sucks more is self-assured destruction. You can apply this to a lot of Google products, such as Google Play Music > YouTube Music, not just their messaging blunders.